A 38-year-old Victorian woman has been charged with serious religious vilification over a Facebook post about Islam.
Photograph: Adam Berry/Getty Images

A Victorian woman has been charged with serious religious vilification after posting comments about Islam on Facebook.

Man charged over Facebook messages to MP

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The Swan Hill woman, 38, was charged on 15 December for a post on 27 November which police alleged would encourage others to commit harm to Muslims.

The woman used Facebook to defend herself saying she had made the comment on the Stop the Mosque in Bendigo page and said “all mosques should be burnt down with the doors locked at prayer time”.

“Probably not the best thing to write but that’s my opinion, others commented after my post agreeing with it and unbeknown to myself it got a lot of likes, that is where their incitement charge is coming from,” she wrote.

“Yesterday I got a call at work by the detective and he told me I was being charged. I told him how can I be charged for an opinion and how can I be charged with a religious vilification when I don’t acknowledge those that are Muslims and those that follow the Quaran (sic) as a religion but as an evil, hateful ideology.

“I am more than happy for it to go public, if I do nothing about it and let them win it goes against everything I stand for and I can’t do that! I didn’t want this or the publicity that will come with it but it is what it is and I’m not about to back down.”

The Stop the Mosque in Bendigo page has put a call out for participants to start their own complaints.

“It is time to start our own discrimination and racial vilification actions on anti-white, anti-Australian and Anti-infidel Australian posts, videos and sermons. If you find them... screenshot or capture them and send them to us,” the post says.